How Many Presidents?

Donald Trump is my thirteenth president. He's number forty-five on the overall list, but he's number thirteenth on my list. Thirteen is an unlucky number in some cultures. I'll let you decide in this case.

How many presidents are enough? The way things are going, I'm not sure how many more I can stand. I started out with Harry Truman, number thirty-three. That's a lucky number, by the way, you can look it up. Truman was lucky in some ways, not so much in others. Trump is number forty-five for the United States. That seems like a lot. I don't think he'll be the last, but he might be close.

It won't be long now before we get our forever president, the guest that never leaves the party. Some clever boy will follow the new playbook and get himself elected so deep and hard that he'll be stuck in there forever. Between deep-fakes and holograms, after any last ability to tell the difference between shit and Shinola has been driven out of people, in that hell-blasted near future when no one really cares anymore as long as there's a can of beans in it for them, we'll get the last face that we ever need, the face that will appear on all of the money and all of the stamps forever, without end.

The whole world has been asking for it for a long time now. America has been begging for it since we let the Republicans off the leash in the 1980s. Don't start complaining after we get it. It'll be our own damned fault.